Tennis Ball
by Feyren
Summary: Akaya plays with a tennis ball, and contemplates.


Sometimes, I think Akaya is a sweet little child who is often misunderstood and rediculed because of that. And so I'm writing this. Please enjoy. It's not exactly drama, but I guess it sort of is at the same time...

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Akaya liked primary colors: red, blue, and yellow. He felt that those colors had originality. No other color could match them. Green, purple, pink. None of them were as original as the primary colors, for the secondary colors were composed of the primary colors. You couldn't get more original than that.

However, he had recently taken a strong dislike to the color red.

Red reminded him of blood. And while others thought red to be a suitable color for him, he did not. He found red murderous, cruel, bloody. He did not like murderous, cruel, and bloody things.

Oh, yes. His image certainly didn't represent that. Why, he was Akaya Kirihara, RikkaiDai's star, their Junior Ace, their little Devil. But Akaya didn't like that name. Devil. That word symbolized his playing style. His crude, reckless playing style.

How many times had he hurt his opponent with his techniques? When did he start?

More importantly, when would he stop?

In truth, he didn't like hurting others. He didn't like watching them fall to the floor, drop to their knees, or collapse. He didn't enjoy watching them being put on cots, being dragged to ambulances, being carried away to hospitals. He wanted a meaningful match. He wanted to win without hurting someone. He did. But in the frenzy of the moment, he'd lose control of himself and his capabilities. And someone would almost always get hurt.

He would feel regret, but never dare to show it. Perhaps it was pride. Hubris. Hubris was man's greatest downfall. His English teacher had told him that, but at the time, he hadn't known what it had meant. The least that the woman could've done was translate it into Japanese.

But now he knew. Pride was always a man's greatest downfall. Men would succumb to their pride, and it would do them no good in the end. It harmed themselves, and it harmed others in the process. He had seen it firsthand. He had experienced it firsthand.

He learned to conceal his emotions over the years. He learned to hide any regret or sorrow he felt. He saw that as a sign of weakness, however childish that was. He'd see his former opponents in the hospital once in a while, and occasionally greet them. He'd consider, with a straight face, offering an apology. But his pride forbade him from doing that. And no matter how long the internal debate would last, it would always come down to a final taunt, some mockery, and a disdainful sniff. He'd turn his back on his injured opponent, whether they were crushed on the outside or within. Sometimes it was both. He'd laugh in their face, a laugh far from humorous. And for that he was hated.

People would hate him for not trying to understand them. People would hate him for being so openly hostile. But people never tried to understand him, did they?

He had faced so much in the past year. Pressure, excitement, terror. All these things, and more, came looking for him. He would run off, in search of good things, but the positive always seemed to elude him.

That had terrified him at first. And _that _had terrified him more. He didn't like the idea of being scared. And so he put on a mask that wasn't his, walked with a swagger that was filched, spoke with a confidence that was foreign. That wasn't him. But he didn't want to show who he was. He wanted to be what he pretended to be. And so, other people saw him as that too. A heartless, emotionless, arrogant junior.

Akaya stared at the tennis ball in his hand. It was so soft, so green, so pure, and so new. He bounced it on the clay courts, and watched it fly up. Always up. Akaya was the one to force it down in the end. He had to force it back to the hard floor. Even then, the tennis ball would bounce back up, to greet his unforgiving hand. It raced up to meet its demise, only to rise again.

Tennis was something like that. Heck, his _life _was something like that.

How many times had he been forced to the bottom? It wasn't just by his captain, assistant captain, and Yanagi. He had experienced defeat before. Not just in tennis, too. He had faced defeat, faced pain, faced sorrow, in other fields. In family. In life. In everything. But he never chose to show it. He never chose to face it. Those feelings were useless, unwanted, and thus neglected. It became so much of a habit that he would forget he had ever been defeated in life altogether.

The one thing he prided himself the most in was tennis. And so, in his first match with the Three Demons, he was given the shock of his life. He had lost, and miserably at that.

He bounced the tennis ball again, more fiercely this time. The tennis ball rose, just as he had expected. He pushed it down.

He had risen countless times. His first defeat had taken a hard toll on him, and he took quite a while to recuperate. But he was Kirihara Akaya. He didn't accept defeat. He prided himself in that as well. And so he challenged them again. He repeated this process many times, improving a little each time. Nonetheless, his opponent was the one walking away with the victory, whether it be Sanada, Yukimura, or Yanagi.

Perhaps that was when he developed his bloodshot mode. Perhaps that was when he began using others' terror to his advantage. Perhaps that was when he started harming others.

Perhaps that was when he began pretending.

The tennis ball flew up. Akaya missed this time, and watched absentmindedly as it flew up, up, up. It soared.

And then it came back down.

Was that an omen? Even if he defeated the Three Demons, well, there would still be more opponents, wouldn't there? Tennis had a greater purpose. And he wouldn't achieve that purpose with lies, with a mask on.

Akaya caught the ball and squeezed it. It was a little worn now, with soil and grass stains on the soft, tangled fuzz. With the little pieces of rock in it, the tennis ball seemed old, defeated, tired. Akaya bounced it. The tennis ball flew up to greet him with the same enthusiastic jump.

He would never truly be defeated. Surely not. If a tennis ball could rise, then so could he. One day, he'd succeed. And he'd succeed the way he wanted to. He'd succeed as Akaya Kirihara, the sweet, the determined, the brave, the gentle. He'd change for the better. He'd be proud of himself.

He bounced the ball one more time.

He wouldn't stop trying.

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It's been a while since I wrote something seriously. One of my stories (which I chose not to post and did not finish yet), Over a Cup of Tea, was about the most serious story I'd written since 2005. I really need to practice if I plan on being accepted into a good high school. I hope you enjoyed.


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